OK, now that’s success. This week’s issue of The New Yorker includes a chapter from the lovely “Girls” main character Lena Dunham, titled “Difficult Girl: Growing up, with help.”
Dunham was born in New York City, Her father, Carroll Dunham, is Protestant, and her mother, Laurie Simmons, is Jewish.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.
The excerpt deals with eight-year-old Lena and her fears. We’re including the first two paragraphs, go check out the rest, it’s worth it, read it today.
I am eight, and I am afraid of everything. The list of things that keep me up at night includes but is not limited to: appendicitis, typhoid, leprosy, unclean meat, foods I haven’t seen emerge from their packaging, foods my mother hasn’t tasted first so that if we die we die together, homeless people, headaches, rape, kidnapping, milk, the subway, sleep.
An assistant teacher comes to school with a cold sore. I am convinced he’s infected with MRSA, a skin-eating staph infection. I wait for my own flesh to erode. I stop touching my shoelaces (too filthy) or hugging adults outside my family. In school, we are learning about Hiroshima, so I read “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, ” and I know instantly that I have leukemia. A symptom of leukemia is dizziness, and I have that, when I sit up too fast or spin around in circles. So I quietly prepare to die in the next year or so, depending on how fast the disease progresses.
Like I said, read the full chapter on The New Yorker now and figure out if you’re interested in buying “Not That Kind of Girl” when it’s released, October 7.
